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Salary Job/Hours Worked

If you have a job for which you are paid with a salary, your boss should make reasonable attempts to compensate you when you work well over 40 hours a week (either in time off or money). To be clear: if you work about 45 hours in a busy week, I think it's okay to let that slide if you must do it to get your job done. Outside of that, I don't think employers should be getting much more than about 40-45 hours a week of work from salaried employees. Unless of course you were hired with the understanding that your job would require more than 40 hours of work per week.

I think this is a very ignorant thing to do and I would like to see it stop. I believe opposition to this idea is mainly from interested bosses and workers who have an exaggerated interpretation of what good work ethic means because they are ambitious.

Being salaried is a joke unless you get flextime and health insurance (in the US, I mean, because everywhere else it's automatic if you're salaried). Even still, I doubt I'll ever seek out salaried work. The only reason I ever wish I was salaried is when I go on vacation and wish I still got paid for that time. But honestly, no way. When I work 60 hours a week, I get paid for 60 hours.

You make a valid point of being compensated for extra work. I have never worked hourly so I have a good idea of what is expected in the real world. Some companies are better than others, but I have never been paid for extra hours. Comp time very occaisionally. Fact is, you're expected to work whatever need be to accomplish the task. When I was a fed auditor, you simply worked the hours period. No OT, no comp...nothing. In CPA firms I was at, you had to bank 150 OT hours in order to get paid overtime and a normal year was 2400 hours or 46 hrs a week before any OT was even discussed...banking or otherwise. Not only that, but if you were in fact working a lot of extra hours, they figured you were possibly working too slow and you may be shown the door. The banked hours were used for slow times during the summer and fall months. CPA firms are nortoriously brutal. I have not worked a 40 hour week in years.

My opinion is if you are salaried, you put in the hours. If you get paid, your employer is waaaayyyy nice. Not everyone is cut out for salary.

The problem with hourly pay is that people consciously waste time. It can reward those who take longer to complete a task. A salary provides incentive to complete your work quickly. But yes, supervisors should do what they can to make everyone's work/salary balance proportionate.

My company, and many others, measure the effectivity of salaried employees based on the number of projects and time spent on these projects in which an individual has been involved. The fucked up thing, though, is that it is often the role of senior staff in an office to bring in new projects, and when they fail to do so, their employees' effectivity suffers. When layoffs are made, it's almost never the senior staff who are let go- it's the mid-to-low-level employees.

The problem with hourly pay is that people consciously waste time. It can reward those who take longer to complete a task. A salary provides incentive to complete your work quickly. But yes, supervisors should do what they can to make everyone's work/salary balance proportionate.

Totally depends on the kind of work. In an office job, you're probably right. In translating, yes. In teaching, no way. Teaching doesn't have a "complete the work quickly" option. I guess salaried teachers get "paid for" their prep hours, but their overall income is lower than mine, and I don't "get paid" for prep hours... so this really depends on which kind of job... but in many cases, I'd agree.

At the company a few of my friends work for, the boss said at a meeting, "I've been noticing that most of you are going home after 8 hours of work. This has to change." Most of the employees are now working ~50 hours a week for the guy. They're salaried, and because the economy sucks right now, most people aren't quitting despite being screwed over...

At times you simply work a lot. I like that though. Other times, I just say see you tomorrow, I'm leaving. Salary takes a certain discipline and mindset of stupidity I guess. It pisses me though when people on salary want the pay and bennies that goes with it and then want to just walk when they hit 40 or so hours. Generally, they don't make it. I see hourly people as disposeable. You train them to do certain things and that's as far as it will go.